


Breakdown

by OneShotWonder



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Desperate Dean, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 14:45:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7980409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneShotWonder/pseuds/OneShotWonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was halfway to the door when he heard a sickening crack that stopped him in his tracks. Once more the sound of cracking wood and then the ground shook as the house collapsed in front of him.</p><p>Dean is working a haunting case with a missing boy when he watches the building collapse with the kid still inside. Desperately searching for the child in the rubble, the case takes a twisted and unexpected turn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakdown

Dean fumbled with his keys in a panic, his hands shook, but he knew Baby like his own body, and he slipped the key into lock. He swung the trunk open so hard it almost latched when it came back down on him. He pulled up the false floor and grabbed bolt cutters from the stash of weapons and tools. He didn’t even bother to close the trunk as he ran full speed back towards the neglected house.

He was halfway to the door when he heard a sickening crack that stopped him in his tracks. Once more the sound of cracking wood and then the ground shook as the house collapsed in front of him. He stopped and the only thing he could do was stare as he watched the house slowly cave in on itself.

_No! no no no! He is still inside!_

Dean's thoughts raced as debris and dust puffed out from the wreckage.  His mind flashed with a million choices, possibilities, and plans as he stood. Blood ran down into his eye, and he shook his head, flinging a red streak onto the ground beside him.

Then he moved toward the house. He was all panic and worry and action. He started to frantically dig in the rubble, harsh whispers of nonsense pleas coming from the back of his throat.

He tried to map out where the stairs would be to the basement in all the rubble, and pulled pieces of plaster, glass and wood, throwing them like a child looking for a toy in a toy box.

The kid was in the basement, chained to the radiator on the west wall. If he could just get to the stairs, he could try to get down and find him.

 

 --

 

The boy went missing two days ago and Dean tracked him to the house just moments before it collapsed. It took him almost a full day of research and interviewing. But the kid’s older brother finally confessed to knowing what happened.

They had been daring each other, like children do, to go into the _‘haunted house_ ’ in the woods, and the fearless eight year old little brother had been the one to volunteer. 

Of course, the moment he stepped into the house, a spirit took him, and the rest of the children scattered, terrified they would be next.

Dean knew as soon as he saw the older brother that he had information. He instantly recognized the guilty expression, the worried look of someone who hurt their little sibling. Dean was intimately familiar with that feeling.

When he finally got the kid alone, the whole story spilled from his mouth.

It took Dean an hour at the local library to figure out the most likely candidate for the spirit, and he didn’t waste any time after that getting to the old house. The spirit was a man who had lost his children when he was alive, after his wife left him and took them from him. Desperate in his loneliness, he ended his life by hanging himself in the basement.

Now, it seemed, exactly 50 years later, the spirit was desperate to hold onto to the boy like his own son.

Dean only saw the ghost for a second, when he ran bursting into the house searching for the boy. A simple altercation with a blow to Dean’s head was his introduction to the spirit.  But an iron crowbar and some salt to the face kept him away long enough for Dean to find the boy chained in the basement. The boy was dehydrated, tired and scared, but listened and cooperated with Dean when he told him that he had to go out to his car to get the bolt cutters to free him.

Of course, this was before the house had collapsed on top of him. Dean had a feeling it was the spirits way of keeping the boy a bit longer, and he was now praying with every breath that the boy was still alive under the crumbled house.

\--

Blood steadily dripped down the side of his head, along with sweat as he dug through the ruined house. His hands were cut and scraped in a million places, and his lungs burned from breathing in the cloud of dust the house had emitted when it fell, but he continued to dig. When he could catch his breath he started to yell to the boy “ _I am coming for you! Just hold on!_ ” between boughts of coughing.

Finally he pulled up a chunk of dry wall and he saw the concrete basement steps.

He could have cried with relief when they seemed to be mostly intact. He stepped down on the first step and shoved part of a door and glass aside to make the opening bigger. He didn’t have a flashlight to see into the hole, but the sky was starting to lighten into a navy blue. He coughed again and wiped blood off his forehead as he wedged his way down the stairs, carefully feeling for each step before putting his full weight on it.

Suddenly, he heard a whimper.

Relief washed over him and he moved down the stairs much faster than was safe, slipping on the last few and scraping his knees.

“ _Hey kid, I am here. Can you talk to me, I can’t see well so I need you to tell me where you are._ ” The boy started to cough and cry hysterically and Dean followed his voice until he finally touched him.

“ _It’s ok, I got you._ ” Dean tried his best to keep his voice steady, evoking all the times Sammy was hurt as a child.

Dean felt around the boy’s body and to his amazement, the chain wasn’t there. He sent a small thank you to whatever had broken it when house collapsed and slipped his arms under the boy’s legs and back.

“ _Hold onto me, there you go_.” Dean guided the boy’s small arms around his neck and slowly lifted. He was silent and Dean stood in the dark for a second to listen to his wheezing breath.

It took them a long time to maneuver out of the small hole above the stairs, but they were soon standing in the predawn air and everything fell eerily silent as he placed the boy on the hood of the Impala.

“ _Wait here._ ” Dean limped back to the open trunk and grabbed the gas can and a book of matches. The spirit was nowhere to be seen, but Dean wasn’t taking any chances. He looked for a good piece of dry wood in the wreckage and lit it up. The fire roared to life under the gasoline and soon, most of the rubble was starting to catch on fire. The boy sat whimpering, with wide eyes and a blank look on his face.

Dean knew that look, the boy wasn’t present, he was somewhere else, probably reliving the horrors of the past few moments, the past few days. He was covered in a white dust, except where a cut on his head had bled down over half his face, matching Dean’s own injury.

Dean sat down on the hood of the car with the boy and watched the fire, thinking of nothing but the fact that they were both alive and safe. Taking a moment to stop planning and rushing and just trying to get the air back in his lungs.

 

After the house fire had dwindled down to simmering coals, and the morning sun was shining down on them, Dean saw a silver Toyota pull up.

 

\--

 

Sam had come from the police station. Posing as a FBI agent, he spoke to the detective on the case and found out that the kid’s older brother had told the police a ghost took him. Of course, the detective had dismissed it, but Sam knew better.

He gathered the details and quickly made his way to the abandoned house.

When he saw smoke, he realized that Dean might have already started getting rid of the ghost. He had thought that Dean was burning the remains, or an object that the spirit’s soul was bound to.

But as he drove closer he realized the fire was much too big. The closer he got, the more panic seized him. He put his foot down hard on the gas of the little Toyota rental and squealed into the clearing.

When he saw Dean sitting on the hood of the Impala, he finally took a breath. His brother was safe.

But why did he burn the whole house down? Did something go wrong? And most importantly, _where was the boy_?

 

Dean stood when Sam got out of the car and Sam couldn’t believe the state he was in. Half his face was covered in blood, dripping down his neck and soaking into the front of his tshirt. He was covered in fine dirt that made his entire body look like one shade of grey, except for the blood, like paint sprayed over parts of him. And his hands were shredded. Pieces of skin hung from his palms and they were so bloody he looked like he was wearing a pair of reddish brown gloves.

Sam just stared for a second, then lunged at his older brother, grateful that he was alive, whatever he had been through. Dean started coughing when Sam had a hold of him and the fit lasted for a long time. When he finally pulled himself together he looked at Sam with the one eye that he could open.

And then Sam knew.

 

Dean stepped aside so Sam could see the boy’s mangled body lying on the hood of the car.  His limbs were twisted in an unnatural way, he was covered in dark red blood, and almost half his head was missing, brain matter spilling out onto the hood of the car.

Sam put the pieces together quickly. The boy was trapped inside the house. Dean obviously had dug through the wreckage to find him, but was too late. Even though his brother’s hands were torn, he still pulled the boy’s body out of the ruins. How long had he been sitting with the corpse, watching the house burn down in front of him?

 

“ _Dean…_ ” Sam had to look away from the boy’s mangled body.

 

Dean’s one eye was wide and far away, and one tear slipped down his cheek, cutting a river in the dirt and blood caked on his face.

 

“ _I didn’t…I couldn’t…save him,_ ” The older Winchester’s voice was a whisper, choked by the dust in his lungs, and the intense guilt.

 

“ _Dean…its ok._ ” Sam grabbed his brother and pulled him close. His heart ached for what Dean had just gone through and he didn’t know how to make it better. It was always hard when they lost someone they thought they could save. But it was the worst with children. In any case, the guilt always hit Dean harder than Sam. So he couldn’t even imagine what his older brother was going through.

 

\-- 

 

Dean stared blankly at the boy’s body. It had clicked instantly when he saw Sam’s face. Some part of the back of his mind had wanted to believe the boy was alive so badly. But now he saw the truth.

 

He couldn’t save him. And for the last hour, he had been sitting with the boy’s ghost, waiting silently for a reaper to come along.

 

This was the first time Dean had seen the spirit of someone that had just died. He wondered why he was able to see him, or if he saw him at all. It didn’t matter much though. The fact is, _he was gone_.

 

Sam coaxed Dean into the passenger side of the Impala and started to make a plan of how to clean the mess up. As he was moving the boy, he saw Dean put his head into his bloody hands and sob. As he worked, making a small pyre for the boy’s body, he couldn’t help but keep the tears from his eyes as he watched his older brother break down, shoulders shaking in the car they called home. And wondered if Dean would ever be ok after this one.


End file.
